About The Bat Cave

Thursday, May 20, 2004

Long weekend here I come.

My new job requires me to put in 10 hour days, and I have to say it's fairly mind-numbing. The one trade off though is that every other weekend is a long weekend for me. That's right - Friday, Saturday and Sunday off. Can I get a WooHoo?

I finished up Unraveled by C.J. Barry yesterday, and after a very shaky start, the author manages to pull out a fun read. The silliness I griped about earlier gets reined in, and the author focuses more on the heroine's personal and emotional growth. As a general rule, I'm not a big fan of futuristics, but Barry is now on my short list of authors I "need to read more of."

TRR's esteemed editor sent me a Chick Lit novel in my last batch of review books. I'm still not sure if she was playing a cruel joke on me or not - but regardless I started Miranda Blue Calling by Michelle Curry Wright today.

I should state up front that despite the fact that I'm in the key demographic for Chick Lit, I can't stand the vast majority of it. The heroines come off as too indecisive and bubble-headed for my tastes. I also resent the misconception that all 20-something women think about are Jimmy Choos, cosmopolitans, losing 10 pounds, and trying to quit smoking.

That's just me though.

But Miranda Blue is starting out promising, even if I find the writing style a bit choppy (the author keeps jumping back and forth in time). Our heroine - yes, Miranda Blue - keeps falling for the wrong men. When she's on the receiving end of a punch by her latest beau, it literally knocks some sense into her. She packs her bags, moves to the middle of Nowhere, Colorado, and starts her own business - a telephone companion service catering to senior citizens.

Unfortunately for our girl, the rundown cottage she buys is across the street from our hero - a nice, sensitive widower who becomes taken with Miranda. Now all he has to do is figure out how to win her over - and stop her from running.

So far, so promising. Wright has me hooked with her unique premise. It's almost too clever - but lord help me, I'm buying into it so far.....

I picked this up because I saw it mentioned in a Harlequin blog post (about cowboys!) recently and I'm nothing if not shallow. What I didn't realize is that it's book 2 in a continuity series (the other two books having been written by o...

This was kind of a mixed bag 3.5 Star kind of read - but I positively inhaled it, so I'm rounding it up to 4 Stars. The heroine is young, makes some seriously bone-headed decisions, but the author writes the heck out of this story and I ...

I should have DNF'ed this because it never succeeded in grabbing me. My reading experience here was largely indifferent, I suspect because the plot was a bit too loosey-goosey for too long. There's the long-lost son (hero) with an evil m...

My reread/revisiting of the McCone series marches on with this book that I vaguely remembered "really liking" back in the day. I still kind of liked it, but it didn't hold up as well for me as Trophies and Dead Things. I suspect because ...

#11 in the Sharon McCone series works best as a mystery if you're completely ignorant of later books in the series. The misdirection involving a secondary character would just play better. I liked this one, but wasn't in love with it. Th...